Sure, everyone involved can come up with a variety of excuses — they aren’t technically misleading customers, it’s all in the fine print, and these are the standard ways the industry operates — but hardware has been advertised in many misleading ways.

Robert_Zanol
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2013-05-17T11:04:14Z —
#2

Size of hard disks is not the same as what maufacturer's market the disk as not just on windows machines, but all OSs. A 500 GB disk shows as 465 GB even in Linux.

Prashant_Sinha
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2013-05-17T11:22:43Z —
#3

Nokia's clearblack IS different. It is a coating over screen, right?

geek
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2013-05-17T12:39:31Z —
#4

It really bugs me when I see the commercials on TV for "4G" networks... somehow everybody has the largest 4G network, or the fastest, or the best. The reality is that only Verizon has a huge 4G LTE footprint across the US - the others are catching up quickly, but Verizon has been ahead for a long time. (And yes, I have read that AT&T's LTE is faster in many places).

So instead, the other networks decided their 3G HSPA+ is fast enough to call it 4G, even though it's not. So irritating.

happygar
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2013-05-17T14:14:56Z —
#5

Regarding Costco and a Samsung 47" 1080 TV. I was blown away when I discovered that my TV was actually "not" wifi ready. I spent an hour with a Costco salesman who never made mention of the fact that I would need a USB dongle to receive my wifi signal. I tried to save a little money by purchasing a Samsung Blue Ray disc player that was indeed wifi ready. Buyer Beware!

Iszi
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2013-05-17T14:30:47Z —
#6

It could be argued that hard drive manufacturers are using the correct measurements while Windows isn’t

I'd say the argument could go either way. It would be interesting to see who first used SI prefixes to mean multiples of 1,024 for computer terminology. When it's all said and done, the prefixes as used by the OS & software are the only ones that really matter. Though it was certainly not right for them to bastardize the SI prefixes as they did, once the usage became so ubiquitous it could be argued that we should have made special terms for the metric versions instead of re-defining the binary ones.

Thomas_Kolakows
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2013-05-17T14:58:07Z —
#7

Actually there are no 4G networks under the specifications set by the ITU-R in 2008. LTE is the closest to the 4G specifications, but still not true 4G. The telecoms hijacked the term and switched it from a technology term to a marketing term. AT&T is the worst as they decided that their improved 3G network (which is still inferior to LTE) could be renamed and marketed as 4G. Samsung's new 5G technology is really what the ITU-R envisioned 4G should be.

JungleBoi
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2013-05-17T16:27:53Z —
#8

If AT&T is doing what you describe, they are violating Fed Reg. Z

MdKnightR
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2013-05-17T17:16:28Z —
#9

Robert_Zanol said:

Size of hard disks is not the same as what maufacturer's market the disk as not just on windows machines, but all OSs. A 500 GB disk shows as 465 GB even in Linux.

I beg to differ. I have a 1TB external hard drive that reads as 999.5 GB in my Ubuntu 12.10 installation. My 320 GB internal registers as 320.

BigTech
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2013-05-17T17:19:52Z —
#10

Oh this is just the beginning. I mean this is where they cherry pick the numbers basically. I mean a popular trick with battery life is to give the duration in days (usually on low power saver mode). Or as Amazon did, they speak of days usually hiding the estimated hours used per day.

There's also when ink and toner cartridge manufacturers manufacturers talk about page yield. of course they never mention that the ink usage required to generate such a yield is almost impossibly low. They don't even mention what coverage percentage they're estimating when they give the yield count.

Thomas_Kolakows
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2013-05-17T17:25:20Z —
#11

AT&T moved from Standard 3G to HSPA+, which is faster than 3G, but slower than 4G LTE. HSPA+ is normally considered to be 3G, but AT&T somehow was able to rebrand it as 4G. That is how they can claim they are the biggest 4G network and such when they haven't rolled out LTE everywhere yet. Only AT&T and T-Mobile used HSPA+. Many call it Faux-4G as it really isn't true 4G. I don't think it is illegal because technically not even LTE is true 4G under the ITU-R specifications. It is all about marketing rather than facts.

geek
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2013-05-17T17:30:55Z —
#12

Thomas_Kolakows said:

I don't think it is illegal because technically not even LTE is true 4G under the ITU-R specifications. It is all about marketing rather than facts.

Plus you can make up marketing terms and call them anything you want. So calling something 3G or 4G is really just applying some marketing term - the underlying 3G networks are completely different between most of the vendors, but they just called them all 3G. What does 3G mean? Third generation?

Iszi
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2013-05-17T17:52:11Z —
#13

I think I recall hearing that Ubuntu (and a few others) switched to using metric prefixes awhile ago.

JungleBoi
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2013-05-17T18:01:07Z —
#14

Reg Z is the "Truth in Lending Act" so it may not apply here, sadly. They should not be able to sell it as 4G if it is not 4G. Maybe we need another "Tell the Truth" in advertising law.

Remember 3G and 4G are just marketing terms not actual specifications, it's more or less a loosely defined set of features.. Which means they are free to call whatever they like 4G. Heck the term 4G likely got coined when on 3G provider needed to get an edge on their competitors so they called what they were doing 4G.

I know that's how it went down in my country.

JungleBoi
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2013-05-17T18:56:25Z —
#17

Yes, I was thinking in terms of Truth in Lending where they cannot lie in their marketing.

Thomas_Kolakows
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2013-05-17T19:17:22Z —
#18

Actually the truth in advertising laws could apply, but unfortunately the ITU, rather than insisting that all carriers must achieve the 4G standard they had set, allowed the carriers to call them 4G. Some call them 4G Transitional as they are closer to 4G standards. LTE Advanced would fall under the ITU's definition of a true 4G. In theory the FTC could investigate any of these ad claims, and often do. The problem is by the time the FTC rules the companies move onto a new marketing campaign.

ro0t
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2013-05-17T20:45:03Z —
#19

I have never seen this happen before, Linux has always delivered the right size. All my drives come up correctly, or mostly correctly, sometime it comes up a few bytes off, but this is due to the MBR.

Robert_Zanol
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2013-05-17T22:35:42Z —
#20

I guess it depends which software you use to look at your disks in Linux. here are two screenshots: one from Windows 7 and one from Ubuntu 13.04